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Sunday, March 23, 2003

By Dana Milbank and Jim VandeHei, The Washington Post

WASHINGTON -- After a 1987 Newsweek cover story titled "Bush Battles the Wimp Factor," the label stuck to George H.W. Bush for years. Now, his son is creating the opposite perception: the Bully Factor.

For months, foreign diplomats have grumbled about American pressure tactics over Iraq at the United Nations and NATO, accusing the administration of "bullying," "hardball" and "arrogance." But complaints of strong-arm tactics by President Bush are not confined to overseas; Republican lawmakers and conservative interest groups report similar pressure on allies at home to conform to Bush's policy wishes.

Although all administrations use political muscle on the opposition, GOP lawmakers and lobbyists say the Bush administration's tactics on friends and allies have been uniquely fierce and vindictive. At home as well as abroad, the Bush White House has calculated that it can overcome adversaries if it tolerates no dissent from its friends.

In recent weeks, the White House has been pushing GOP governors to oust the leadership of the National Governors Association to make the bipartisan group endorse Bush's views. Interest groups report pressure from the administration -- sometimes on groups' donors -- to conform to Bush's policy views and even to fire dissenters.

Often, companies and their lobbyists endorse ideas they privately oppose or question, according to several longtime Republican lobbyists. The fear is that Bush will either freeze them out of key meetings or hold a grudge that might deprive them of help in other areas. When the Electronics Industry Association declined to back Bush's dividend tax cut, it was frozen out when the White House called its "friends" in the industry to discuss the tax cut, according to White House and business sources.

Learning to shut up

Under such pressure, lobbyists and lawmakers who voiced doubts about Bush's economic policies have publicly reversed themselves. "I think I should have kept my mouth shut," Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said in one such recantation last month.

The forms of pressure -- exclusions from White House guest lists, a loss of access to key Bush aides, calls to dissenters' superiors, veiled threats saying the White House has noted the transgression or even shouted accusations -- convey the same message. Grover Norquist, a conservative activist who enforces loyalty for the White House, puts it this way: "If I bitch, guess what? I get coal in my socks."

The technique has served the White House well, by keeping the lockstep support among Republicans needed to pass Bush policies in a closely divided Congress. "His only hope is to move forward with a virtually unified Republican Party, and therefore they feel obliged to not let any [dissent] develop that would undermine that," said Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution. "It's fascinating the extent to which this administration has been able to hold troops in line for an extended period of time."

But there are signs of a backlash in the latest round of tax cuts. In Congress, a group of moderate GOP senators and representatives said they would support only a tax cut much smaller than Bush's. And lawmakers suggest resentment is growing.

More than a dozen members of Congress interviewed for this article said support for Bush's economic plan is weaker than the public might realize because lawmakers don't want to challenge the president publicly.

"We don't want to stick it in the president's eye -- at the moment," said Rep. Ray LaHood, R-Ill. He said up to 20 House Republicans oppose Bush's tax cuts, and an additional 40 or 50 are uneasy about the details and timing.

The White House says its style is vigorous but not strong-armed. "The president believes strongly in issues and he diligently pursues what he believes in on the basis of policy, and that's why he's won so many votes -- because members agree with him," press secretary Ari Fleischer said.

But GOP lawmakers have other reasons. "People have come to realize that it is better to be seen helping the administration than pulling down parts of his plan," said Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla. "People don't want to take on the president when he's confronting so many crises."

Foley, who opposed Bush on a free-trade vote, knows the consequences. When Bush senior adviser Karl Rove recently encouraged Housing and Urban Development Secretary Mel Martinez to run for the Senate from Florida -- the same seat Foley seeks -- many on Capitol Hill suspected it was Bush's revenge on Foley. Foley, in an interview, said he was worried he might get the "Pawlenty" treatment, a reference to last year's Minnesota Senate race, in which the Bush White House pushed out Tim Pawlenty, the GOP majority leader in the Minnesota house, to clear the way for handpicked candidate Norm Coleman.

A year ago, Michael Parker was forced to resign as head of the Army Corps of Engineers after he publicly questioned Bush budget cuts. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and economic aide Lawrence Lindsey were forced out after making remarks at odds with official policy. And John J. DiIulio Jr., a former Bush aide who criticized Rove, retracted the accusation by repeating the same words Fleischer used to denounce it.

Some White House tactics have become lore. After Sen. James Jeffords, I-Vt., opposed Bush's first tax cut, White House slights and threats to cut his pet programs drove Jeffords from the GOP. Last year, after Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., voiced concern about Bush's immigration policy, Rove told him to never again "darken the door" of the White House. And there was the case of Rep. Charles Whitlow Norwood Jr., Ga., leader of a group of moderate Republicans who opposed the White House on HMO patient protections. Under intense pressure from the White House, Norwood broke his promise to his colleagues, striking and announcing a deal with Bush without consulting them.

Revenge on the governors

But the hardball tactics are deeper and more pervasive.

Eager to send a message to the National Governors Association to reflect a GOP majority, the White House for the first time excluded Raymond Scheppach, the association's executive director, from February's governors' annual dinner at the White House. Encouraged by the administration and its allies, a few Republican governors -- including the president's brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush -- threatened to stop dues payments or quit the group. After a bipartisan governor's association committee drafted a statement seeking more federal money for the states, the White House let its displeasure be known to the governors, and Republicans arrived at the meeting last month demanding the rejection of the "partisan" statement.

Conservative interest groups get similar pressure. When the free-market Club for Growth sent a public letter to the White House to protest White House intervention in GOP primaries for "liberal-leaning Republicans," the group's president, Stephen Moore, picked up the phone at a friend's one evening to receive a screaming tirade from Rove, who had tracked him down. On another occasion when Moore objected to a Bush policy, Rove called Richard Gilder, Club for Growth's chairman and a major contributor, to protest.

"I think this monomaniacal call for loyalty is unhealthy," Moore said. "If the White House alienates anyone who isn't a complete 100 percent team player, if Bush does get into trouble politically, he's not going to have those groups rush to his rescue. ... It's dangerous to declare anybody who crosses you an enemy for life."

Leaders of three other conservative groups report that their objections to Bush policies have been followed by snubs and, in at least one case, phone calls suggesting the replacement of a critical scholar. Corporations are coming under increasing pressure not just to back Bush but to hire his allies to represent them in meetings with Republicans. As part of the "K Street Project," top GOP officials, lawmakers and lobbyists track the political affiliation and contributions of people seeking lobbying jobs.

In a private meeting week, chief executives from several leading technology firms told Rep. Calvin Dooley, Calif., and other moderate Democrats that they were under heavy pressure to back the Bush tax plan, although many had reservations.

On the Bush tax cut, a senior GOP leadership official said House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., is aware that opposition runs much wider than publicly acknowledged. But Hastert has called in members to lecture them about taking stands against the party, according to GOP aides, and has changed rules to make it easier for leaders to punish wayward members.